Samsung sources components for the Galaxy S7 phones from several places – Samsung hardware (Exynos chipset and ISOCELL camera) and outside (Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and Sony IMX camera). We already saw that the cameras do have some differences, but no clear winner in quality.
What about the chipsets? From our tests we’ve seen that the Snapdragon 820 has an advantage in single-core CPU tests and GPU benchmarks, while the Exynos 8890 leads in multi-core tests.
The test consists of two “laps” the first time around is a cold test that looks how quickly apps are loaded from storage. There the Exynos has a slight lead, perhaps the multi-core advantage gives it a boost.
The second lap checks if phones keep apps into RAM so the user can switch between them without having to reload the app completely. Last year it became clear that TouchWiz is pretty bad at it, but Samsung had supposedly fixed the issue.
And it sort of has – the Exynos-based Galaxy S7 flips back to apps very quickly while the S820 variant reloads them from scratch.
Both have the same amount of RAM – 4GB – so it’s a difference in caching strategy (or lack thereof). The Snapdragon-powered S7 runs AT&T software, but could the carrier’s influence be that big?